


I Dreamt That You Were Still There

by Penser_Trop



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/F, First posted fic, One-sided pining, grief-induced silence, inappropriate medical care, victorian era asylum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 04:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20383909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penser_Trop/pseuds/Penser_Trop
Summary: Following the death of Anne Lister, Ann Walker lived the rest of her life confined within the walls of an asylum. With her companion gone, she is lost within the world that she must newly remake to be her own once again.





	1. Chapter 1

The yardscape looks the same as it always does this time of the morning - the grass a sea of emerald obscured by the creep of fog rolling in from the thicket of nearby forest. It creeps slowly. Smoothly. Taking on a life so uniquely its own that it always seemed so foreign. Like a creature not of this world where, if one were to look away, they’d surely miss it. Morning was the only time the view would look even remotely different.

When the fog was thick, she could pretend of being elsewhere but here. At a calm sea, deep within the forest, crossing mountain tops. With her eyes closed and her forehead pressed up against the chilled glass, she could almost feel the air of the outside world. To experience the wind once again. To taste the smells. 

She could look out and teleport to another world; another time. To pretend that the company she so intimately missed had returned and that they were both young again and oh so foolish. When back pain and perpetual anxiety was the most of her worries. 

Now, she felt nothing but cold despite the tartan shawl thrown about her shoulders. Nothing but sick, what with all of the medicine they fed her like clockwork.

Nothing but empty, hapless void. 

After staring out for a time, she’d always know what was to happen next, even without looking. The click of a door opening, closing. The clink of a spoon to the lip of a big glass bottle. The feeble voice of the nurse. 

“Miss Walker, it’s time for your medicine.”

Posing no threat, they gave her one of the weaker nurses, unlike the others with their strong arms and inability to hesitate when a girl needed yanking or a beating if cooperation wasn’t there.


	2. Chapter 2

Months upon months had gone by with little point of recognition, save for the day and night cycle that all seemed to endlessly blend together. Inside the asylum, days, weeks, months, the very concept of time itself disappeared as those who it targeted the most were barred from its very existence. Sunlight waning, colors drab and bleeding into one another, faces all becoming the same. 

Though by the eighth month, she still wasn’t used to any bit of it. Though familiar with the set schedule, expectations, and the faces of the staff and women similarly subjected to the same treatment, Ann refused to be apart of it all. Throughout the day, she remained a passive entity placed on one of the armchairs, gaze firmly fixed out the window no matter the weather. Though a stack of reading material rest on one of the side tables, she never did touch it. Simply sat and stared. 

Come dinner, she would be fetched and helped up by a nurse who provided her arm as she was escorted to the makeshift dining room. Dinner hardly touched, she would talk to no one and simply gaze to the window across from her. Dull, listlessly. 

At bedtime, she would be stripped of her tartan gown and stays, leaving the uncomfortable chemise and allowing her to crawl into the mattress space deemed her own. Eventually, she would sleep, rest, and dreams would come to her where no one else could witness them. 

Come morning, the daily doctor’s visit would ensue with the man grabbing at her jaw and fingering her pulse point; analysing her complection, looking about her pale blue eyes. When she was first brought here, the roughness was met by Ann shrinking back, face mildly contorting at the chill of his touch. 

Originally, his question of her overall health and feelings were met with short quips of speech, but now went entirely unrecognized. 

At one of these inspections, he turned to one of the nearby nurses. “And how long has Miss Walker kept silent?”

The nurse thought for a moment. “Why, it must’ve been a couple of months, sir. And even then, I argue that you can call her whispers talking.”

The doctor smoothed the whiskers just about his chin, jotting something down in his open book with his pencil. “Right, very well.”

The next day, a slate was placed onto her lap with a piece of white, crumbling chalk. 

“I trust you know how to care for it?” He more so commented than asked, not particularly caring for her answer. “Now, I would like to see you write something. Anything. Your name, perhaps. Neat and legible.” His eyes were fixed firmly about the slate, pencil poised over his record book. Watching, waiting.

Slowly, she picked up the chalk, already feeling it crumble partially in her loosened grip. She touched it to the slate and languidly began to write. “ _ Ms. Ann Walker. _ ”

“Remarkable,” the doctor muttered. “Absolutely..” He took a moment to write, the tines of the quill’s nib making light scratches. “Now, something a bit harder. I would like you to look outside and write what you see. It can be anything, really.”

Though pointless in its nature, Ann had no real reason not to oblige. Afterall, writing instruments were widely barred from patient use. 

It being fairly early in the morning, the fog hung thick over the yard, obscuring most of the grass and vegetation with its haze. Slowly, she began to write.

“ _ I see fog - thick and dark. Grass, lush and green. Fixed with drops of dew. Iron bars. _ ” 

He looked from the slate to the window, analysing. “Incredible. Absolutely incredible. And do you feel that this slate is of benefit to you?” Ann gave a nod, but this was missed as the doctor jotted down in his book yet again. “Wonderful.”

From then on, the slate was added as a personal asset - the only personal item she still held uniquely in her own possession. Come morning, she would be given a fresh piece of chalk if the one the day prior had run out, and she was given the freedom and expectation to minimally communicate. If questions were poised to her, she would have to respond, least it be taken away.  _ Yes, no, cold, unsure _ . But more often than not, she was left to her own devices in that room with its view fixed over the courtyard, the nurse at the door paying half attention. 

Ann would write along the slate in lengthy lines, ached with a height smaller than could be read by any onlooker. Any time she suspected someone was looking, it would all be wiped away without a single thought, each word instantly removed from all of existence. 

She would write pretend letters to family, friends, other means of acquaintances that she still wanted to believe still cared for her. Even after she moved to Shibden Hall, after she grew onto Ms. Lister in that frightening manner and took to the world at her side. 

No one bothered to visit her here despite the ability to do so being entirely possible. No letters, nothing. 

With each wiping of the slate, she liked to imagine the words themselves being packaged up and soaring through the air until it reached their intended destination of the recipient's mind. She liked to imagine them suddenly thinking of her for no particular reason once the delivery was complete. Of them growing sorrowful, fit with longing as those emotions hit hard. 

Nothing ever came of it, of course. 

After some time, she would switch into a hand that was still clumsy, awkward, bulky with lack of practice and unfamiliarity. In its nature, the very letters themselves weren’t legible to anyone save for only one person in this world now. Thinking back to what she had seen, Ann copied the crypt hand from her memory down and wrote secret notes throughout the day. These, she guarded with her very life’s essence, lest they be seen and her deemed more mad than before. 

_ I still dream of you. To see your face, your hair, the glow of your smile just beside me. I’ll feel the shift of weight as you settle down in bed next to me, that creeping warmth of your body matching mine amongst the sheets. Some days, I’ll wake up and swear that you’ll be hanging over me, petting the bits of hair that’ve now grown out of their stitches and soothe the beads of sweat that’d formed in the fit.  _

_ When I pass through the halls, ushered by a firm hand to the elbow, I swear at times that I’ll see your face, that they’ll call me into the parlor to answer the calling of my one and only visitor.  _

_ That’ll never come, I’m aware. Those six months travelling back to Shibden at your side did not go over my head. I still remember waking early to see that you were still properly cared for, feeling the dying surge of emotion as grief eventually dulled into numbness. I was always there at your side just as you’d been at mine even when I became fickle, insulting.  _

_ I never knew that I’d feel this way in the end. I wouldn’t regret any of it if you were still with me. If I weren’t  _

But she couldn’t force her hand to form the last word. ‘ _ Here’ _ . Between her fingers, the chalk became wet and gooey, the slate itself speckled by fat drops of liquid. 

When head she started to cry? Ann put her fingers to her face in near astonishment, hardly believing that she still possessed the means to carry out such an emotion in the first place. Just a day before, she’d half believed they removed that alongside any other feeling than numbness. 

When she sniffed back the running of her nose, the nurse looked up from her book. “Ann?”

In a rush, she threw the sleeve of her dress over the slate, blotting out the writings in a fit of unmatched speed. By the time the nurse had approached, the slate was nothing but smears of wet amidst dark grey speckles. 


End file.
